Carole Heath joins the praise for Simon Russell Beale and we’re also thrilling with mighty expectation over Tom Hiddleston’s coming Henry V on the BBC. You can read our little running argument though about the ‘Oxford theory’ with knowledgable William Ray in the comments below, which will be linked in time. You can also read some research into Edmund Shakespeare and London’s Southwark above, although we confess to being more the creative writers, than the blinking scholars. With all due respect to blinking scholars, or ones coughing in ink.

Carole also mentions the soaring poetry of Henry V. To us and James Shapiro it was written at that critical moment in Shakespeare’s life and career, so wonderfully described in Shapiro’s 1599, when The Globe Theatre went up in Southwark and a troupe that stayed together for 20 years, among acting ffelowes that remembered each other with mourning rings in their wills, broke from the likes of more lowly entertainment and money-minded Phillipe Henslowe, driven on as the lease ran out in The Theatre. Though everyone could do with a decent amount of money, not least Phoenix Ark press! Henry V is about forging a language of national identity, a Royal propaganda too and also a consciousness of Self and Kingship. It begins in the absolutely brutal dismissal of Falstaff in Henry IV Part II, so devastating with Hiddleston and Russell Beale, only because you had come to love Falstaff’s flawed humanity, although precursored in the play within the play, the trying on of roles, in the Boar’s Head game. “Banish honest Jack and banish all the world.” “I do, I will.”

Carole also mentions the famous St Crispins’ Day speech of Henry V, that made the Laurence Olivier movie, facing the Nazis in World War II, so seminal, with its flags fluttering over that wooden theatre, as they were always raised to announce performances. As England had faced the Spanish Armada, but also the ‘invisible Armadas’ of renewed threat, or the rumour of it, in 1599. That rallying cry so limply quoted by young Rees Mogg in Parliament last year, as the UK goes on about being anti European, “imitate the actions of the tiger, stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, disguise fair nature with hard favoured rage.” Shakespeare’s jewel of genius and insight though is not just about power and rhetoric, but a King who had the common touch and so was loved, but loved as a hero made myth, in that ‘little touch of harry in the night.’ The soaring power of the poetic chorus, as ‘fire answers fire’ in the flaming crucible of his own imagination.

The feast of Crispin Crispianus came out of that pre-Reformation tradition of Saints and though historically accurate that Agincourt was on the eve of that Saints Day, removed under Vatican II, it is an interesting footnote to the work on Edmund Shakespeare here, that Will Shakespeare makes so much of it. The legend is about two brothers, twins, who were the patron saints of shoemakers. The speech of course gives Henry the common touch, to connect with the ordinary soldiery, but to stir those hearts to the noble fight, despite all the ironies of life and death that surrounded it. Peter Ackroyd makes much of how Southwark was so involved in the stink trades‘ there though, on the edge of the Thames, like shoemaking and leather working. It was also a district of many Haberdashers, like William Smythe, who left us a list of London Lord Mayors, and ran an extraordinary local poor support system that was probably more like a local sweatshop. The Southwark people he gave poor aid to wore cloaks with his initials stitched in, WS (no, not William Shakespeare) but then everyone was aspiring to rule the roost. Some of the work of local nobility there, like Lord Montague, who owned the palace in front of Southwark Cathedral running to the Thames, strikes much of today’s charity political dinner syndrome, or ladies who lunch and launch.

Southwark, a very tough London district, including taverns, theatres and brothels, also gave the largest number of recruits to Elizabethan and Caroline wars. So again comes a speech talking straight out of a London area it was forged in, certainly performed in, and one which would have found direct relevance and appreciation among a local audience. That unknown Brotherhood of Our Lady of Assumption we mention in the Edmund Shakespeare work above (unedited), which had owned the tavern/brewhouse where Edmund was staying in the year of his death, 1607, The Vine, was founded under Henry VI by wardens of St Margaret’s Church in Southwark, including one John Le Hunte. The site of St Margaret’s is now the old town hall on Borough High Street, but with very Catholic leanings, as the area was such a fault line for London Reformation battles, it was thrown down in Henry’s dissolutions and turned into a local prison. The Puritans would later do that to the Bishop of Winchester’s palace too. Reading the records of St Margaret’s Church, where ‘pleyers‘ are mentioned a hundred and fifty years before Shakespeare, as we are aware also crucial new evidence, performing on St Margaret’s and St Lucy’s Days, suddenly stop, around 1545. Then all you have are six latin depositions of the wardens. They were the Henretian inquests, that also threw down local St Thomas’s ‘hosptial’ as a ‘bawdy house’. But the area was an area of tanners, leatherworkers and shoemakers, as well as Thames watermen. Southwark Cathedral, then St Saviours, formerly the monastic buildings of St Mary’s Ovaries, which took over jurisdiction for St Margaret’s parishoners, was also directly linked to the guild of leatherworkers. One prominent warden, Thomas Cure, who founded a local school in Southwark, was Elizabeth I’s saddler. Some of the material on record should be copied out to make a Shakespeare Southwark collection.

All good leather to chew on, in wondering who these real people were, in the forging of immortal art. Who they certainly were not, although he may have had talent, may have loved literature and theatre and may have been a patron, was Edward devere, 17th Earl of Oxford. Shakespeare lived and worked in Southwark, in a ‘Domus et Aliorium’, perhaps right next to The Globe, or part of a building complex that had tenements attached, like most taverns, as did his failed youngest brother Edmund. As did Philippe Henslowe and Edward Alleyn, and so many of the names associated with the London theatres, as writers and players. Also carpenters, prompters and the rest. That is the thrill of building up a true portrait of 16th and early 17th Century Southwark and Bankside, that we will try to blog in time. Look at the records of Southwark Cathedral, in burial and death registers, and you can literally feel the globe being built, with the baptism of joiners children, or the arrival of ‘men in bookes’.

Although, to take William Ray’s side on the ‘authority’ of establishment theorising, it is astonishing in today’s disastrous publishing climate, and what passes for culture, that we have not found backing for the work and story from major publishers. You, the reading public, will have to tell us then if there is interest in the work, by coming here and voting with your leather clad feet! We’d enjoy it if you do, there is really fascinating and unknown stuff, that wakes a world 400 years old. Indeed, if you don’t, you may find yourself accursed you were not here!

PRIVACY POLICY

Privacy Policy
Protecting your personal details on our website
Last updated: 14 December 2010
PhoenixArkPress (Registered number 7460068), whose registered office is at The Forge, Tichborne, Hampshire SO24 0NA, knows that you care how information about you is used and shared and we appreciate your trust in us to do that carefully and sensibly. This notice describes our privacy policy and forms part of our website terms and conditions ("Website Terms").
By accepting our Website Terms or by visiting phoenixarkpress.com ("the Website") you are accepting and consenting to the practices described in this Privacy Policy.
The Website is brought to you by PhoenixArkPress. PhoenixArkPress believes it is important to protect your Personal Data (as defined in the Data Protection Act 1998) and we are committed to giving you a personalised service that meets your needs in a way that also protects your privacy. This policy explains how we may collect Personal Data about you. It also explains some of the security measures we take to protect your Personal Data, and tells you certain things we will do and not do. You should read this policy in conjunction with the Website Terms.
When we first obtain Personal Data from you, or when you take a new service or product from us, we will give you the opportunity to tell us if you do or do not want to receive information from us about other services or products (as applicable). You can normally do this by ticking a box on an application form or contract. You may change your mind at any time by emailing us at the address below.
Some of the Personal Data we hold about you may be 'sensitive personal data' within the meaning of the Data Protection Act 1998, for example, information about your health or ethnic origin.
1. Collecting Information
We may collect Personal Data about you from a number of sources, including the following:
1.1. From you when you agree to take a service or product from us, in which case this may include your contact details, date of birth, how you will pay for the product or service and your bank details.
1.2. From you when you contact us with an enquiry or in response to a communication from us, in which case, this may tell us something about how you use our services.
1.3. From documents that are available to the public, such as the electoral register.
2. Using Your Personal Information
2.1. Personal Data about our customers is an important part of our business and we shall only use your Personal Data for the following purposes and shall not keep such Personal Data longer than is necessary to fulfil these purposes:

2.1.1. To help us to identify you when you contact us.
2.1.2. To help us to identify accounts, services and/or products which you could have from us or selected partners from time to time. We may do this by automatic means using a scoring system, which uses the Personal Data you have provided and/or any information we hold about you and Personal Data from third party agencies (including credit reference agencies).
2.1.3. To help us to administer and to contact you about improved administration of any accounts, services and products we have provided before, do provide now or will or may provide in the future.
2.1.4. To allow us to carry out marketing analysis and customer profiling (including with transactional information), conduct research, including creating statistical and testing information.
2.1.5. To help to prevent and detect fraud or loss.
2.1.6. To allow us to contact you in any way (including mail, email, telephone, visit, text or multimedia messages) about products and services offered by us and selected partners unless you have previously asked us not to do so.
2.1.7. We may monitor and record communications with you (including phone conversations and emails) for quality assurance and compliance.
2.1.8. We may check your details with fraud prevention agencies. If you provide false or inaccurate information and we suspect fraud, we will record this.
2.2. We will not disclose your Personal Data to any third party except in accordance with this Privacy Policy.
2.3. We may allow other people and organisations to use Personal Data we hold about you in the following circumstances:
2.3.1. If we, or substantially all of our assets, are acquired or are in the process of being acquired by a third party, in which case Personal Data held by us, about our customers, will be one of the transferred assets.
2.3.2. If we have been legitimately asked to provide information for legal or regulatory purposes or as part of legal proceedings or prospective legal proceedings.
2.3.3. We employ companies and individuals to perform functions on our behalf and we may disclose your Personal Data to these parties for the purposes set out in clause 2.1 or, for example, for fulfilling orders, delivering packages, sending postal mail and email, removing repetitive information from customer lists, analysing data, providing marketing assistance, providing search results and links (including paid listings and links) and providing customer service. Those parties are bound by strict contractual provisions with us and only have access to Personal Data needed to perform their functions, and may not use it for other purposes. Further, they must process the Personal Data in accordance with this Privacy Policy and as permitted by the Data Protection Act 1998. From time to time, these other people and organisations to whom we may pass your Personal Data may be outside the European Economic Area. We will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your Personal Data is treated securely and in accordance with this Privacy Policy and the Data Protection Act 1998.
2.4. Where you give us Personal Data on behalf of someone else, you confirm that you have provided them with the information set out in this Privacy Policy and that they have not objected to such use of their Personal Data.
2.5. In connection with any transaction which we enter into with you:
2.5.1. We, and other companies in our group, may carry out credit and fraud prevention checks with one or more licensed credit reference and fraud prevention agencies. We and they may keep a record of the search. Information held about you by these agencies may be linked to records relating to other people living at the same address with whom you are financially linked. These records will also be taken into account in credit and fraud prevention checks. Information from your application and payment details of your account will be recorded with one or more of these agencies and may be shared with other organisations to help make credit and insurance decisions about you and members of your household with whom you are financially linked and for debt collection and fraud prevention. This includes those who have moved house and who have missed payments.
2.5.2. If you provide false or inaccurate information to us and we suspect fraud, we will record this and may share it with other people and organisations. We, and other credit and insurance organisations, may also use technology to detect and prevent fraud.
2.5.3. If you need details of those credit agencies and fraud prevention agencies from which we obtain and with which we record information about you, please write to our Data Protection Manager at PhoenixArkPress, The Forge, Tichborne, Hampshire SO24 0NA.
3. Protecting Information
We have strict security measures to protect Personal Data.
3.1. We work to protect the security of your information during transmission by using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) software, which encrypts information you input.
3.2. We reveal only the last five digits of your credit card numbers when confirming an order. Of course, we transmit the entire credit card number to the appropriate credit card company during order processing.
3.3. We maintain physical, electronic and procedural safeguards in connection with the collection, storage and disclosure of personally identifiable customer information. Our security procedures mean that we may occasionally request proof of identity before we disclose personal information to you.
3.4. It is important for you to protect against unauthorised access to your password and to your computer. Be sure to sign off when you finish using a shared computer.
4. The Internet
4.1. If you communicate with us using the Internet, we may occasionally email you about our services and products. When you first give us Personal Data through the Website, we will normally give you the opportunity to say whether you would prefer us not to contact you by email. You can also always send us an email (at the address set out below) at any time if you change your mind.
4.2. Please remember that communications over the Internet, such as emails and webmails (messages sent through a website), are not secure unless they have been encrypted. Your communications may go through a number of countries before they are delivered - this is the nature of the Internet. We cannot accept responsibility for any unauthorised access or loss of Personal Data that is beyond our control.
4.3. We may use 'cookies' to monitor how people use our site. This helps us to understand how our customers and potential customers use our website so we can develop and improve the design, layout and function of the sites. A cookie is a piece of information that is stored on your computer's hard drive through your browser, to recognise your browser and which records how you have used a website. This means that when you go back to that website, it can give you tailored options based on the information it has stored about your last visit. You can normally alter the settings of your browser to prevent it from accepting cookies.
4.4. If you do not want us to use cookies in your browser, you can set your browser to reject cookies or to tell you when a website tries to put a cookie on your computer. However, you may not be able to use some of the products or services on our website without cookies.
5. Turning Off Cookies in Different Browsers
The Help menu on the menu bar of most browsers will tell you how to prevent your browser from accepting new cookies, how to have the browser notify you when you receive a new cookie and how to disable cookies altogether. Additionally, you can disable or delete similar data used by browser add-ons, such as Flash cookies, by changing the add-ons settings or visiting the website of its manufacturer.
6. Links
6.1. The Website may include third-party advertising and links to other websites. We do not provide any personally identifiable customer Personal Data to these advertisers or third-party websites.
6.2. These third-party websites and advertisers, or Internet advertising companies working on their behalf, sometimes use technology to send (or "serve") the advertisements that appear on the Website directly to your browser. They automatically receive your IP address when this happens. They may also use cookies, JavaScript, web beacons (also known as action tags or single-pixel gifs), and other technologies to measure the effectiveness of their ads and to personalise advertising content. We do not have access to or control over cookies or other features that they may use, and the information practices of these advertisers and third-party websites are not covered by this Privacy Policy. Please contact them directly for more information about their privacy practices. In addition, the Network Advertising Initiative offers useful information about Internet advertising companies (also called "ad networks" or "network advertisers"), including information about how to opt-out of their information collection.
6.3. We exclude all liability for loss that you may incur when using these third party websites.
7. Further Information
7.1. If you would like any more information or you have any comments about our Privacy Policy, please either write to us at Data Protection Manager, PhoenixArkPress, The Forge, c/o The White Cottage, Tichborne, Hampshire S)24 0NA, or email us at dclementdavies@aol.com.
7.2. We may amend this Privacy Policy from time to time without notice to you, in which case, we will publish the amended version on the Website. You confirm that we shall not be liable to you or any third party for any change to this Privacy Policy from time to time. It is your responsibility to check regularly to determine whether this Privacy Policy has changed.
7.3. You can ask us for a copy of this Privacy Policy and of any amended Privacy Policy by writing to the above address or by emailing us at dclementdavies@aol.com. This Privacy Policy applies to Personal Data we hold about individuals. It does not apply to information we hold about companies and other organisations.
7.4. If you would like access to the Personal Data that we hold about you, you can do this by emailing us at dclementdavies@aol.com or writing to us at the address noted above. There may be a nominal charge of £10 to cover administrative costs.
7.5. We aim to keep the Personal Data we hold about you accurate and up to date. If you tell us that we are holding any inaccurate Personal Data about you, we will delete it or correct it promptly. Please email us at dclementdavies@aol.com or write to us at the address above to update your Personal Data.